The recreational marine industry has seen significant advancements in the technologies employed in contemporary recreational watercraft. Indeed, many contemporary fishing boats for example may be outfitted with sonar devices for finding fish, gps guidance technology for automatically piloting and positioning a boat, deep and shallow water anchors to broaden the boat's operating environment, etc.
Each of the above technologies may include equipment that in whole or in part is mounted on the outboard side of a boat. As a result, various after-market mounting brackets are required to affix such equipment to the outboard side of the boat. As one example, certain items of marine equipment mount to the transom of a boat via a bracket. As another example, certain items of marine equipment mount to what is referred to in the art as a jack plate which functions as a motor mount between the transom and an outboard motor via a bracket. In either case, there is a significant stratification in the design of transoms and jack plates. As a result, there is also a significant stratification in the design of mounting brackets that will accommodate the various transom and jack plate designs. Indeed, in some cases a single item of marine equipment can be associated with a multitude of mounting brackets so that the equipment may operate with various boat models.
Unfortunately, manufacturing a variety of mounting brackets for a single piece of equipment drives up the cost of manufacturing, and ultimately, the cost on the consumer side of the particular equipment and mount the consumer desires to purchase to outfit their particular boat. Therefore, there is a need in the art for a mounting bracket that can accommodate various hull geometries so as to reduce the number of mounting brackets that would otherwise be associated with a single piece of equipment.
The invention provides such a mounting bracket. These and other advantages of the invention, as well as additional inventive features, will be apparent from the description of the invention provided herein.